Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of March 27, 1873

Overview

The day combines tenderness, political commentary, and a renewed sense of artistic and civic mission. Richard's description of the writer as otherworldly makes the relationship feel elevated above ordinary society, while conversations about crime, class conditions, and strikes widen into judgments about national character. He sees disorder as something potentially organized and suspects the state must act decisively rather than drift. Yet the evening is still shadowed by exhaustion, poor health, and annoyance from the press.

Content

Thursday, March 27:

R. tells me that yesterday I seemed to him like an apparition, someone from another planet in comparison with the other women, like Schiller's unknown maiden; I tell him that this poem by Schiller moved me in my youth, though I could not understand it.

He says: "Yes, it works like music; I also remember how it moved me when I read it at the start of Schiller's works - in the edition of that time. Schiller has this gift of conveying something mysteriously moving; the various beatitudes in the virgin's vision, Thekla's disappearance, the disappearance of the unknown maiden."

R. continues work on his Bayreuth, glad that he can accord Bavaria a good claim on the district. Over coffee I read in the Tagblatt that a woman - English - poisoned 20 people without being found out by the authorities. That reminds us of our recent claim that only in England were the products of culture to be found! Now we are shown in what a terribly heartless manner the lower classes are treated, or rather, ignored.

In Germany, R. feels, the situation is not so acute; things go ambling along. The mists which keep things from being seen too blatantly are also our good fortune. We come to the topic of strikes, and I cannot help feeling that these upsets, which now occur so frequently and alarmingly, and are so thoroughly un-German, are being organized by the Catholic party. "Let's hope Bismarck knows that, too," says R.

[A sentence based on word play omitted as untranslatable.] Concern that Bismarck is obliged to disclose everything to the Chamber. "I am afraid," says R., "that he is still stuck in a sort of routine and cannot get free of it. He should dissolve the provincial diets and so on, then impose laws, and uphold them with the help of the army."

R. goes out; I remain at home in spite of the fine weather. I am not well, and the children also have colds. In the evening R. intended to correct the Rheingold proofs, but he is not in the mood, also not for dictation; vexation is gnawing at him. At six o'clock this morning he drafted a letter to Eduard Brockhaus, requesting the correction; on top of that the note from the M.D. Allgemeine Zeitung, which downright infuriates him. His only pleasure is in his library, among other things a first edition of Goethe's works in eight volumes.